It's been a few days since the first major patch of Season 3, so I thought I'd look at some of the champions affected by the patch and see what effect (if any) they had on their pick rates and win rates (stats taken from Lolking).

Annie got a model rework, which lead to a huge spike in play.

Pick Rate: 3% --> 9%

Win Rate: 48% --> 48%

Blitzcrank received nerfs to his base mana and mana costs but he remains an extremely popular ban.

Pick Rate: 15% --> 13%

Win Rate: 48% --> 48%

Cho'Gath got another slap on the wrist with silence duration nerfs.

Pick Rate: 22% --> 22%

Win Rate: 48% --> 47%

Elise had her mana costs increased which reduced her ability to be a lane bully.

Pick Rate: 12% --> 11%

Win Rate: 51% --> 49%

Ezreal received more nerfs (to his passive, ult, and base movement speed), but he still remains extremely popular.

Pick Rate: 48% --> 47%

Win Rate: 49% --> 48%

Katarina received some tweaks to discourage the "tank katarina" build that Voyboy popularized.

Pick Rate: 14% --> 12%

Win Rate: 49% --> 49%

Kennen had the energy cost of his ultimate removed which might help him manage his energy better.

Pick Rate: 4% --> 5%

Win Rate: 51% --> 53%

Master Yi had his AP scaling on Meditate cut in half, which was a significant blow to his most popular build.

Pick Rate: 10% --> 5%

Win Rate: 49% --> 46%

Miss Fortune lost some of her AD scaling on her ultimate. This does not seem to have significantly hurt her power in solo queue.

Pick Rate: 30% --> 28%

Win Rate: 56% --> 56%

Nasus can now stack up his Siphoning Strike quicker by killing large creeps. Though this change is nice, it does not seem to be enough to solve Nasus' problems.

(LOW SAMPLE SIZE)

Pick Rate: 1.1% --> 1.8%

Win Rate: 45% --> 45%

Nunu had his Blood Boil absolutely crushed. Nunu was never the strongest solo queue support, so this change has significantly dropped his pick rate and win rate.

Pick Rate: 33% --> 24%

Win Rate: 50% --> 44%

Olaf had nerfs to his Undertow, Vicious Strikes, and Ragnarok. It's not too surprising that his stats have suffered significantly.

Pick Rate: 21% --> 14%

Win Rate: 47% --> 41%

Shaco , traditionally one of the strongest solo queue junglers, has been brought down to size with nerfs to his Deceive and Two Shiv Poison.

Pick Rate: 12% --> 7%

Win Rate: 55% --> 51%

Sion received changes to his Enrage similar to the Nasus and Veigar changes. It seems that these may have made Jungle Sion somewhat more effective.

(LOW SAMPLE SIZE)

Pick Rate: 1% --> 1%

Win Rate: 45% --> 49%

Tristana received some small buffs to help her early and mid game. They have helped a small amount although Trist remains rather unpopular and low win rate.

Pick Rate: 7.5% --> 9%

Win Rate: 44% --> 46%

Tryndamere got some buffs to his base attack speed and fury retention which seem to have helped him a bit.

(LOW SAMPLE SIZE)

Pick Rate: 1% --> 1%

Win Rate: 43% --> 47%

Veigar did not seem to be helped much by the buffs to his Q as his compatriots (Nasus and Sion) were.

(LOW SAMPLE SIZE)

Pick Rate: 1.5% --> 1.5%

Win Rate: 44% --> 43%

Volibear got some nice buffs to his base attack speed which will help him stack his W and apply his ultimate more effectively.

Pick Rate: 3% --> 3%

Win Rate: 48% --> 50%

EDIT:

Alistar was stealth nerfed by removing the .5 second stun from his W. Apparently this was not intended and will be hotfixed in the near future. Regardless, the changes have been pretty brutal for our favorite cow.

Pick Rate: 11% --> 9%

Win Rate: 44% --> 40%

EDIT 2: Forgot Shen too G_G

Shen had some more minor nerfs, this time focused primarily on his jungling.

Jesus, I knew they were being taken to court. I didnt know they were found guilty. That is fucked up. As a teacher does that mean I should start predicting all of my pupil grades lower than I expect them to get, just in case they dont meet the grade I set and then sue me??

I'd laugh, but in Portugal that's almost the case. You won't get sued, but you will have a hard time justifying any large fluctuations in grades, to the point where many teachers make it a rule not to grade anyone over 17 out 20 in the first term, out of fear the student might lose steam and then they'll have to justify the drop.

A year ago (ish) there were some earthquakes in Italy that destroyed a town. Lawsuits were leveraged against scientist accusing them of manslaughter because they didn't warn the town. It's a bit more complex than that, but the bottom line is, you shouldn't make scientists scared to be put in prison for manslaughter for trying to help people and being wrong. Yes, scientists need to be accountable, but the threat of manslaughter is completely unreasonable. I don't expect any major geologists to be spending much time in Italy in the future.

I love this too, very interesting! but would like to see effects after 1 week. 3 days seems to prone to be a victim of herpa-derpa trying new/changed items and not getting the proper "feel" for the new changes.

Sometimes I wish after a certain level, say 10, Volibear's passive would turn to an instant heal rather than a heal-over-time because late game if you get bursted down it's like you don't have a passive at all, and it still procs and goes on CD. I know the point of Volibear is to kite when your passive procs and build somewhat tanky to avoid this problem, but that doesn't always work. Minor complaint, really. I just want the bear to be OP.

to be perfectly honest, Voli isn't meant to be a tank. Yes, his W and passive scale with health - but he has no natural tankiness except for a heal, and all his other skills are damage spells. voli is clearly meant to be a damaging bruiser (if you want to play a full tank, there are better alternatives), and such , if you want to kill more than one personin a teamfight, you'd better get some CDR.

Also lower? So you want to increase the duration and lower the CD? Add on to the initial idea of the instant heal? Coupled with the recent AS buff? Are you sure you aren't trying to make the most devastating bear known to Summoner's Rift?

Honestly, Volibear is cool at the moment, but there is almost no place for him in competitive play because he doesn't offer any utility or damage that you can't have on someone else with a better kit. Though Voli's Frenzy does a ton of damage, it's only ever worth it when they are low health. This makes team fights tricky because when using it in a team fight, you have to first, get to someone who matters, second get them hope they are low/get them low enough to use it before you're peeled, and then use it. Once you do, you won't have any high damage source for the next 18 seconds. after that you're just running around stomping etc.

I agree with this, while also say that due to his high damage on frenzy, as well as its % damage of bonus health stacking, building him like Olaf is probably the best way to go, but possibly with an attack speed item like Wit's End for MR, Rageblade for hilarious attack speed build-up, or Zephyr because it gives him literally everything he needs besides hp, since he lacks Olaf's passive. MS, tenacity, attack speed, attack damage, CDR. Warmogs, Locket, Zeke's esp. after the buff coming its way to increase the CDR on it to 20%. Bulwark for MR tanking, spirit visage is also interesting but not the most effective item it seems, randiuns, and as for boots, ninja tabi for armor or mercs for MR, or lucidity for max CDR. Imo his kit has so much damage that you really want to build mostly tanky items to survive initial burst and stick onto carries dealing high burst and AoE while annoying them to death with loud bear noises.

Don't forget that it also helps jungle volibear a lot! It might not seem like much, but when you throw in attackspeed reds and quints (common jungler runes), the impact on his clear speed is pretty nice!

That would be great. He is very kitable as is have some extra time to bite would help make being kited less frustrating. I find my self auto attacking minions while chasing just so I dont lose my stacks.

I just don't see how it's intuitive to have to kite as a giant armored bear with a skill that makes him go down on all four and charge, and with the rest of his kit encouraging him to stay in the fray and dish out auto-attacks and slows.
Having to run away for your heal to have some effect at all is, I dare say, very bad design for such a champion. His passive should in some way encourage him to stay in the fight instead.

I'm obviously exaggerating, but far too many people don't realise how much damage that fuckin ult does. Get decent attack speed and just wail on the nearest guy, let the chain lightning do the work. You don't need to actually get to the squishies as Voli.

Depends on how far ahead you are and how safe you feel. If you're fed/farmed enough that you can comfortably survive for now, getting a Zephyr will let you start ripping apart people, if not a Wit's will suffice until probably last item.

Yeah voli should transition from health build to atsp as the game progresses. His w scales with health and it gives you the tankiness you need to utilise your ult. Later on you will be tanky enough for good players to ignore you so you want to get as many AAs into your ult duration as possible.

Originally that's what I thought too, but all the stats it offers are ones that Volibear's kit benefits from. Also, the Rageblade passive triggers similarly to his passive, and really helps in lane to win duels, by really getting the most out of his passive. It took a little bit of an adjustment in gameplay to really make the most of Rageblade, but once both his passive and the item passive trigger simultaneously, you can go from <%20 to %80< easy, and solidify a 1v1 kill in the process.

I agree that running away seems counter-intuitive on Volibear, but I think your conclusion is wrong. What makes this game interesting is that you have choices. As volibear is now, you have to choose between dishing out damage or run away to come back to the fight later with more hp. It's a trade-off between damage and tankiness you have to do.

It's basically the same as with Lee Sin's W. When you are dueling someone you can either use it on your self to get that shield and lifesteal for an advantage in the duel. Or you can save it to use as an escape if you'd lose the duel.

If we have champs that are only good at doing one thing they have no choices and they become very static. It removes a lot of the skill from the game as not even the pros can do much more than what their champ can do if the champ is static enough.

That would be a valid choice, if his heal was strong enough to allow him to return to a fight with a sufficient amount of HP. it's not. He's not Mundo. If it activates during a fight and he manages to escape under enemy fire, the passive will leave him at something like 10-15% HP. If he's ignited he'll be left with even less than that.

I just want Volibear to see a shit load more competitive play because (not to sound hipster but) I loved Volibear from the beginning and I want a MUCH bigger sample of how people build him Because I'm pretty sure I build him very shitly.

He is a safe pick. He is an all-rounder hero. No obvious weaknesses, and actually rewards being played at the highest level just as heroes like Vayne or Tristana, who are known for being more technically, mechanically challenging. So people play him a lot.

Since sometimes items can affect people (like when hextex revolver was nerfed to stop akali/vlad stomping) if there are any major changes in characters who werent explicitly mentioned in the patch notes, could you mention them? Not sure how you are getting this data, but if it was easy to do/automate, that would be great.

Omfg, I might even get off my ass and start a farming session if this is true, unfortunately nasus doesn't have too many spare item slots, as he as to invest in tankiness to survive, otherwise this would be crazy good news.

Its not a bug, Gangplanks Q is a similar spell to Nasus' Q and the bonus damage from it helps with your critical damage. Dravens Q works in the same way and adds bonus damage to the crits for 1.6 crits. Nasus' Q was the odd one out in this rule and was changed to follow suite of the others.

I think you are confused. By bonus damage, I'm talking about the stacking damage which never has crit before. Unless they come out and say "The bonus damage from Nasus' Q now crits", it's a bug. It wasn't in the patch notes.

He never was the best for solo queue anyways (as seen by his 47% win rate pre-nerfs), but he was a monster in competitive play because of his high skill cap and extremely safe laning (even 1v2). I think they missed the mark somewhat on the nerfs (probably would've been better nerfing his ability to wave-clear from a distance with Undertow).

Managing his axes is probably the hardest thing about him. Maintaining the uptime on his slow and getting his max damage potential relies on aiming axes fairly close to his target so that he can pick them up easily but doesn't miss them. This is especially hard for the first few axes. Efficient axe micro is what makes or breaks a good Olaf, especially in the jungle but if you can't do it against AI controlled monsters you've got no chance against a slippery ADC like Ezreal.

I don't mean that he shouldn't be able to 1v2. However, his huge superiority over basically anyone else in 1v2 lanes makes him a must-pick/ban in competitive play. Meanwhile, 1v2 lanes are super rare in solo queue. Small nerfs to his undertow could bring him closer to par with other strong 1v2 in competitive play, while keeping his solo queue strength reasonable.

Only change that I can think of that would stop him from being able to as easily farm at range but still have good jungle clear speed/chase potential would be to up the cost on his q but give him a substantial refund of the mana cost when he picks it up, in addition to the cooldown reduction.

I agree they should've nerfed the damage on undertow and not the slow. I've tried to play Olaf since the nerfs but if the enemy team has any kind of ranged they can easily kite now that the slow is weaker. Now I feel like Olaf is just another melee bruiser with no real engage.

Couldn't agree more. As an Olaf main that doesn't participate in high elo competitive team play, this is real rough. Also, one of the fun parts about laning as Olaf was keeping the opponent guessing as to if I was maxing q or e. After this, it seems that maxing e now seems more viable than maxing q, when they both were equally viable before.

So....I'll just play Jax for a while until they figure this stuff out.

I've now play a fair few games since his nerfs hit, and while you have to be more aware of the situation with both W and E on a longer cooldown, he still plays just the same. The nerf to Undertow's slow was maybe not needed, but you can still harass enough that it gets people pushed out of your lane.

I'd like to see the slow be put back on, as really it was the only way to deal with ranged casters because you could at least catch up to them, now its really just a harass tool with little to no benefit of the slow. To be honet, the only major concern was the ult passive, and now that is fixed he should be fine and dandy.

As an avid Heimerdinger player, I think the AI buff helped a bit, but not enough to change the win rate for most Heimer players overall. It is and will always be about proper placement of turrets, understanding the under three minion rule for poking and being able to accurately nail enemies in transit with a grenade (which should be easy if you're also in transit).

What did change was probably the turret baits in early gameplay, which won me a kill or two more per game.

Was kind of bored of Ranked until S3, so I started playing again, specifically to test out more advanced Heimer strategies and have been fairly successful. (Major losses were likely due to a Fizz, which is IMO his only real threat in mid).

Heimer shoots 3 rockets (5 with his ult on), so if you're attempting to hit a champion, you need to be patient and make sure there are fewer than 3 minions between Heimer and the enemy champ for you to target him as well. A critical tactic is knowing this and being able to time a rocket just after that third minion goes down to land a kill. More advanced measures work in combo with flash. Since his rockets have one of the longest ranges, it comes to much of a surprise when you're seemingly too far away to do any damage and you land a rocket in his face after flashing over a minion that is about to go down.

Oh, i allways thought that his rockets prioritize enemy champs and only go after minions if there are no champions in range. So you are saying they go after the 3 closest targets. Funny I used to play Heimer a descent amount in Dominion but never noticed that. Probably because there are fewer minions per wave.

Mhm, it especially gets interesting when you've got someone going b at the tower while you're clearing out a wave that's seemingly too far for Heim to do anything .. and a rocket ends up smacking you in the face. Of course, this isn't a mistake that would be made in higher ELO matches.

The turret buff really did a lot. I have had a lot of good games with Heimer. Get someone with an ultimate that can AoE stun, and it is so easy to land a really good grenade and five rockets (with Heimer ultimate up, of course). He can do massive damage, and he actually has really good abilities - stun, blind and slow!
Anyone who has this "jump on" ability is always really hard to deal with, but the grenade do help to get them off you again.

The only reason why I don't really notice the buff as much is because my game plays to one of his biggest advantages, his global taunt. Kiting into turrets is key for me. For example -- having one turret in a bush, taunting in lane and drawing them to the turret in the bush (the intended surprise, even if they take down the decoy). And as soon as they get in the bush .. stun, rocket ult, feign away and drop another turret. This should only be done with your team nearby for the immediate gank, and is literally perfect with a Zhonya's popped!

Can you include Alistar in these stats? I heard they added a .5 second stun to his headbutt, and removed the extra stun he gets for nailing someone into a wall. Sounds like a nerf to me, although I haven't had a chance to try him out lately.

They haven't added the 0.5s stun yet. In my opinion he should have a 1.5s stun if he hits them into a wall. Look at him now absolute trash tier :( my first ever main and most played champion ever in tatters

The big problem with Taric is that his stun is ranged and unavoidable (almost every other stun/snare is either close-range or a skillshot or avoidable in some other way, like poppy/vaynes' stuns). By itself this isn't much of a problem because he can only really do anything else if he's in melee range, but if he's with a carry that has a blink or pseudoblink (especially Ezreal), they can force an engage on literally every stun so Taric doesn't have to put much thought into it. Just stun when both carries are anywhere in the lane and his carry has their mobility skill up.

Yup, also with the nerfs to just about every Support in the game over the past few months Taric has been getting stronger and stronger, in my opinion the nerf to Nunu put him over the line. Riot really needs to buff up some of the weaker Supports rather than constantly nerfing only the strongest one every patch over and over and over in a cycle.

You have to realize most of the sample comes from low elo, and in those ranked games people don't really keep up to par with the meta. They pick up some things like kha'zix being op, but generally up to high silver it's just Katarina every game, being flamed for not banning malphite and shen (even though no one knows how to play them because they're always banned) and ezreal because he is just so forgiving when you are a horrible player, with his E.

That was before his base attack speed and ultimate were nerfed. That was more recent than IEM Katowice, and people haven't adapted. Especially in low elo, where they still ban malphite, pick rammus and dodge if they see a blitzcrank.

The problem with the nerf is that his w is really the only ability that makes him a good support. His passive and q are not really that usefull (as a support) and the Ult will be interupted in most teamfights before it has too much effect. With his w nerfed by 30% and I just do not see how he is as good as Sona/Lulu in any stage of the game.

When his E hits a target while his his W is on an ally, if that ally hits the target that is slowed by E they get mini-stunned for 0.4 seconds.

Only works once.

Could be changed, maybe works twice, his W mana cost could be increased or something but it'd make him much more interesting, it'd be improve his jungling ganks too it would make him have to be careful about where he ganks from, because he would want to be able to get the W on an ally in the first place.

I would be interested to see what would happen if they made his q similar to cho'gath's ult and make it castable on champions, but have it do reduced damage. It might make him useful for more than his w and buff control.

You max E if you think your AD is shit, otherwise always max bb first, the extra dmg it gave your ad, especially if u got in their face and used your large health pool was insane... at least it used to be :(

I was close to maiming Nunu, in my low elo opinion, he is no longer viable as a support, or at least I would not bring him to support anymore. I use to always win with him but since the nerf I have managed to get destroyed with Caitlyn as my AD Carry. It was a sad but nessersary nerf.

they nerfed his jungle by nerfing e, then they nerfed it again by making q unable to kill big monsters, then they nerfed his support by destroying w. either they are completely clueless or they don't want him to be good at all.

He is still viable as a mid-game support. He absolutely dominates early laning phase as both top and mid and once you get past about lvl 12 other heroes start peaking against him. High sustain and horrific AP scaling snowballs plus free spell makes him a walk in the park laning. He locks down lanes. He is still awesome. Just much less so as a support.

I get flamed in ranked with midding yi, despite keeping a 66% win rate. They think that a tweak to meditate totally ruins yi. I think the part that totally makes yi is his q 1:1 scaling and his reset potential to completely wipe a team.

I don't get what's so devastating about it. Instead of healing all of my health and getting a ton of armor and mr, I heal all of my health and get the same amount of mr and armor. The real weakness is what's already been there, any cc whatsoever.

I'm mid 1500's. Last time I played Yi we had Kayle top, Anivia mid, Taric/Graves bottom. Enemy team had Garen, Heimer, Thresh, and Diana. So all my lanes had CC and burst. The enemy team had no reliable way to shut me down in fights and Kayle ult pretty much guaranteed I could get a kill and then reset.

He is generally pretty bad, but if you know how to play him he can work in certain situations. I've only played him 4 or 5 times out of 200+ ranked games.

No, they're just different. Shyvana does more AOE damage, but she doesn't scale as well with damage items, so she's forced into a bruiser/tank role. Master Yi has two massive damage steroids that make him better for killing single targets.

Yi's cleartime is based on luck, and as to who is more useful in teamfights, it does not matter. Both champions have next to no CC. Shyvana's ult is not a good form of CC, it's unreliable and does not lock people down. Yi has no CC whatsoever, only a global taunt, which is kinda effective.

Yi has far more single target damage output than Shyvana ever will. A slight issue with Yi though is that he has to build at least one tank item. Randuins or Warmogs to survive burst.

If Yi can get through the peels, he can easily destroy a carry in a few hits.

Shyvana doesn't instakill carries, she just sticks for (hopefully) long enough that she does enough damage to force them away.

with reduced ratios on the heal, you might actually be able to outdamage him. a lot of times yi would just stop and heal in the middle of a fight and gain health faster than the people attacking him could damage him, sometimes even when outnumbered by as much as a 3:1 matchup.

if there's a lack of hard CC to interrupt his channel, it was kinda ridiculous

With Sion and Master Yi in particular it makes me wonder how much of their win percent change is due to people playing a different style. For instance, AD Yi had a really low winrate and historically that's how he was played. Now that AP Yi has been nerfed, are more people just swapping to AD and losing more or is AP really that lackluster?

Same with Sion. Did his winrate go up because people started to take him in the jungle more? Or did it go up because the extra health even while laning? Or did it just go up because more people are playing him AD over AP? I don't know! :)

At least part of MF's high win rate can be attributed to her relatively easy nature. She is extremely strong in lane and she can pretty much rely on her ult in team fights. Similar to Taric for supports, she's a good AD for people who don't play AD.

Also consider her lower pick rate. I would say that the people that pick her play her often so are pretty skilled at her, whereas everyone and their cat plays ezreal.

Off topic, but I don't think MF is easy either... She has a low skill floor but a decently high skill cap. She's got great damage and an easy to use ult but no escapes. She has combos that require decent skill to use (AA->Q->AA, E->R), plus her passive is nasty strong if you can abuse it but absolute crap if you suck. Bad MFs can ult, but good ones are an absolute nightmare.

I agree that people should stop bitching about Ezreal, but to be fair soloqueue winrate is a pretty poor indication of a hero's balance. Olaf was broken as fuck and never had an outstanding soloqueue winrate. The highest winrate AD carries besides MF are Varus and Draven, who are hardly seen in competitive play. I've seen a lot of Varus recently in competitive, but the team he's on almost always loses.

If you go by tournament winrates Ezreal doesn't seem that OP either. His winrates are literally all over the place over the course of the last year. With him posting like 80% winrate at Dreamhack and an abyssmal 28% at MLG Summer Championships. Hell at S2 finals he was played in 90% of games and posted a 45% winrate. And S2 finals were before his W debuff got removed.

So if Riot isn't balancing based on tournament winrates or solo queue winrates it begs the question if they're balancing is due more towards champion popularity rather than actual winrate percentages.

Point being, winrates in competitive play would hint that he hasn't been OP for awhile now. The three events we have the most Ez games for are OGN Winter (43% win), IPL5 (58% win), and MLG Summer (28% win).

edit: Just ran the numbers of all of his games and he has a dead even 200 wins and 200 loses over the course of the last year.

Riot doesn't have a consistent or reasonable philosophy in regards to balance. The only tournament lately where Ezreal has had a substantial winrate was the recent European LCS qualifiers. At the NA qualifiers, his winrate was exactly 50%. Riot is clearly just nerfing him to make him less popular, which I think is fucked up. He's a fun hero with a cool design that has broad appeal. That's a terrible reason to nerf him, and a good reason to design more heroes like him. He's literally the only hero in the game that fills the teenage male archetype, and considering all the teenage males that play this game, it would make a hell of a lot of sense to design more heroes of that archetype.

Nah, it's not them nerfing him because hes OP, its that hes TOO strong,

He can fit in every single team comp and doesn't give that much option for counter play, hes sort of frustrating to play against too which is understandable, hes easy to shut down though but the moment he snowballs hes practically unkillable, the moment he gets a blue and red he seems immortal.

You shouldn't have to build certain champions just to be able to kill one champ, for example mid shouldn't have to pick kass just so silence will destroy ezreal.

Hes fun to play though, and I feel hes not op but they seem like they're taking the wrong approach to fixing him.

What they should do is buff W and nerf E not nerf his ultimate and passive and everything else.

Punish ezreal for having to use e by raising its mana cost, something like 80-90-100-110-120 while buffing his w's base damage so that someone can actually think about whether to level q or w in lane, because atm W is pointless.

Not only did they nerf its aoe and it's damage they also nerfed its attackspeed reduction which was the only reason it worked so well in lane.

You are trying to play down his winrate in competitive play but 50% win rate when he has 400 games played is way too high. The fact that he was picked and banned so often is because they pro's knew he was strong as hell. The reason he has a 50% win rate could be attributed to him being so well known in the scene, because he is played so much people know how to play against him.

Throughout most of S2 he was above 50% win rate in Ranked as well. To say he wasn't OP is objectively wrong.

When a champ has over 50% pick rate in both Pro and Non-pro areas and boasts a 50% win rate in both then you are certainly looking at some balance issues.

I'm not playing down his winrate at all. We have a giant sample size of Ezreal games and he's got a 50% winrate across competitive play and pub play. You cannot get more balanced than that.

Teams weren't winning games simply because they had Ezreal or else the statistics would back that up. The fact of the matter is Ez has always been a safe well rounded champ that was picked often so people assumed that he was OP. The numbers do not back up that statement they only confirm that he was a popular pick.

Competitively viable and OP are one and the same, it just takes a while for solo queue to catch up.

Every champion with a high pick rate in competitive play eventually gets nerfed, see Olaf, Ezreal, Evelynn, Cho'Gath, etc.

The problem with looking at statistics for win rates in competitive play is that it's so dependent on which teams are picking the champs. Azubu's still going to beat Curse no matter what champions Curse gets.

Some tournaments will see players picking one champion over another a lot (Alex Ich, for example, with his Master Yi, Galio, Evelynn, etc. phases), which artificially inflates their win and pick rates without anything having changed in the metagame.

High pick rates in competitive play generally point at even lower tier teams realizing their strength and trying to pick those champions, but still losing. Shen, for example, has an abysmal competitive win rate, but is picked/banned in nearly every game.

Yeah, Ez is seen as the most forgiving AD carry because he has a decent laning phase, good poke, and an instant escape, so a lot of players who aren't good at being ADCs will pick him instead of an escapeless carry like MF.

I think riot hates Vayne. They created a beautiful monster. Does most damage in game? Give her a short range then create a gap closer on every single champ. She has a knockback to protect her short range? Create a champ that can't be disabled (fuck vi). Stealth op? Nerf it to one second. Give twitch 8 seconds and rengar or kha a lot too (idk the length). Damage is too much late game? Give her no health, damage, mana, armor, or Mr early. Amazing attack speed scaling? Nerf attack speed.

Don't get me wrong. I love Vayne and have probably 200 games with her but I'm frustrated at how shitty other adcs can play (cough mf cough) and still obliterate simply by being fed because if you can right click and mash your face on the keyboard you don't need to know how to kite or reposition or even animation cancel and still pound ass.

Sorry just talkin with a 2.5k elo support and he was talkin about Vayne and how she's only applicable in "im 100% positive I can outplay my enemy no matter what" situations, in which case you could've outplayed that same enemy with any other ad. He said people cap out at 1600 with Vayne because smart opponents slaughter her no matter what. Exception perfect mechanics: doublelift. Simply because with Vayne you are punished too hard for anything less than perfection.

EDIT: plus i just lost a game to a mf (as ez) where she LITERALLY never moved between attacks/spells. It was like where ever she would move was where she would be standing for at least the next 5 seconds. I never died to her but my team just couldnt figure out to move SIDEWAYS out of her ult lol. 15/3/8 final score and she never HAD to kite anyone, but she was such an easy target. So dumb.

I find Vayne to be... a problem. If you buff her at all, she becomes insanely OP. She does % max health as true damage. That means there is NO WAY you can build against her. If she hits late game, she becomes unstoppable as it is.

Yes she gets stronger than any other AD when she gets BT/PD. However, most soloq games are decided by then in some regard. This leaves 80% of vayne's games to be comebacks that have to rely on your other teammates willingness to play it out. There is no way to get BT/PD before 20 min unless you are either fed as fuck, in which case you have already won and couldve outplayed the opponent on any other champ also, considering how poor her lane phase is compared to others.

Vi, Xin, Rengar, Zed, Kha, Talon, etc. all get fed easier and can shut vayne down from that mid-game point into late-game really well. Meaning, if you happen to win with vayne, you probably could've won on any other ADC.

The oddest cases are when the support is much better than both the adc and support on the other side, and can get vayne fed and she simply presses r, spams q and her support protects her while she does the most retarded plays.

The % health is very small. 60+8% at max level means that 3.5k target youre attacking will take 340 every third attack. Her REAL damage comes from 50% AD scaling every third hit (tumble reset) COMBINED with her constant animation reset because of it, combined with +55 AD, combined with stealth repositioning, combined with hard CC that no other AD has. She is the only champ that I've played that can crit 1k damage with three items, aside from Draven(who is another story). She has this insane kit that has AMAZING potential but really only ONE person (doublelift) can harness it correctly to go much further than 1600. Chaox doesnt really play vayne often against the higher elos and if he does he's going to be relying on his teammates to perform well enough. Which is not what soloq is about. It's about being the biggest contributing factor to your team at all times.

Shes a problem when your adc is so bad (or support) that you cant zone her and she gets to farm. Thats it. any other time she's screwed.

Or any melee ad "carry". They are as squishy as a ranged ad yet darius does more damage and casters do it faster. It sucks for them, yes.

However they snowball early easier than Vayne. They have protection skills in a sense. Yi is untargetable during alpha strike. Can't be disabled (maybe just slowed? Sorry if off) during ult.

Also, yi wasn't created with the intention of giving him the highest dps in the game. Idk if Vayne was created with that intention, but because of her insane damage on top of her very fun skillset, she remains a high pick.

Vayne is the sword of the occult of champions, hard to start, hard to maintain, but once you hit the snowball point you're good, until you get crushed. Yi is more the like executioners calling of champs, hey sure well give you 18% Lifesteal at a cheap cost, nope.

I'm pretty sure Yi can still be hit during Alpha Strike even if he can't be targeted during the animation (which isn't long). Vayne's Q is far more reliable as an escape especially in ult. Yi is also only immune to slows during his ultimate, I have no idea how you could possibly make that mistake. He might actually be viable if he was immune to CC in Highlander.

Haha it made sense when I woke up, I was a bit tired. It is too much of a stretch, as I read it again.

And yes, I remember it says can't be slowed.

Idk what would hit him during alpha strike... Skillshots? Amumu ult?

Don't get me wrong, yi is in a weird place that makes him really unviable(unless you're already better than your opponent), I just care about Vayne more :P

I'm not saying Vayne is worse off than yi. She is far more viable than yi because like I said, her skillset is amazing as hell. She's an amazing champ that is INSANE mid game on. I just find it ironic that any decent opponent will be able to shut her out hard early, never letting her snowball during mid or smash face during late.

MF should theoretically be easy to play against, at least as a team. She has very little CC (unlike Draven, Caitlyn, Tristana, Varus, and Vayne) and has no escape (unlike Corki, Ezreal, Graves, Vayne, Tristana, Caitlyn, and Twitch).

Playing her effectively should force the player to learn how to position well, because once the enemy gets to her, she's dead. It looks like your team was at fault for not taking advantage of her weaknesses.

That is what happened every fight. She was far too fed for me to duel her (plus ez's nerfs make him a hair weaker). I tried to tell akali to use her burst on MF. I pinged her head. Nope. Gotta take out darius first while mf picks everyone off. ah well. moving on.

It's because people just farm with his Q and lose lane because they never trade when people fight them.

Watch Nyjacky play Veigar; he doesn't concern himself very much with farming his Q and will use it on the enemy laner more than his own creeps. He'll even nuke down waves with W instead of picking them off one by one with his Q to increase his AP.

I've never watched Nyjacky play but that is exactly how i play veigar. I dont worry myself too much about farming his q. You need to find the right balance. Roaming and picking up ganks is way more important on veigar imo. Especially since you get more ap with champion kills. It also hurts me sooo much when i watch people in laning phase try to get the enemy champion with a 'w' without landing a stun first. SOOOO much mana waste.

Difficulty in using his stun, his burst is extremely single-target and is very hard to land Dark Matter if he doesn't use his stun. No mobility as well means he can be very weak to assassins and bruisers.

True. It did take me awhile to master his stun. I use his stun smart cast because I feel that I would always over think it and screw it up otherwise. But when I started using it smart cast and was able to memorize the dimensions of the ability I was able to imidiately throw down the stun with a smart cast w followed by a q and then ult for the kill with amazing accuracy and speed. I just think a ton of people underestimate veigar.

I think what really gets people is that Veigar is a high skill cap champion. If you can hit the edge of your stun reliably for example you can land a full combo easily and not having to count on the other player for walking into it. Meteor is pretty useless if people don't walk in the stun, or having another champion in your team applying cc first. Also using Q to last hit creeps or champions is a pretty skill-based move.

Considering the popularity issue: Veigar is really good in solo queue if you take the time to learn him. In tournament however he gets outshined by other champions, and as such pro players don't really take the time to learn him, and by that not contributing to popularize him. Most players decide on what to play based on what they've seen being successful, on stream or in game.

I don't understand it as well. I used to play Veigar all the time (in normals), and I stomped with him. I just got bored because half of the game I would spend farming my Q, so I mostly stopped playing him. Should pick him up again.

With his relatively low cool down massive stun box and AOE god hammer of a 'w' attack i feel that when executed correctly he is one of the most effective team fight AP mids in the game. So I am sorry but I am going to have to Strongly Disagree with you. Also a strat that I use on him since he does have long cool downs is lichbane. Keeping him viable in team fights after his rotation has been expended with his 3 second q cooldown. If built correctly a viegar lategame should have upwards of 800 AP so a q with an 800 - 900 damage auto attack every 3 seconds is amazing IMO.

i dont think if statistics are that usefull a few days behind the patch. because the the picking behavior is messed. champs are picked because they got buffed/nerfed. this is messing up the original statistic

Nasus would be competitive in my opinion if they buff his base stats a little bit and drastically lower his mana costs. Even with a iceborn gauntlet he still has massive mana problems. For a champion with no real wave clear, and one damaging ability his mana costs should be much lower all around. His kit is fun, and he is a decent champion for some lane matchups but he needs a few things worked out in order to be good.

Funny how shaco got nerfed when i was expecting a buff. "Hes too strong early game" yeah but hes ONLY strong early game. Have you played a 40 min game with shaco? The moment you go in there you die for sure unless you are incredibly fed.

Yeah, I think they messed up their shaco nerfs. They would've been better off tweaking the JiTB so that it was slightly less strong early (a lot of what makes shaco annoying is his super fast double buff), while giving him stronger base stats and making the boxes stronger late game (maybe give them the Zyra plant treatment or just a lot more HP).

Nerfing the only thing that is good about a champion is a good way to end up with a useless champion.

I think all Volibear needs now to be a consistent pick is a slight change to his Q - namely that it needs a real ratio. Currently, it just adds some base damage per rank to the fling. That's the same as Xin Zhao's Q pre-remake, which was a major aspect of why he scaled so poorly. Now his Q has a 1.2 total AD ratio on each auto attack, in addition to the base damage it has. Wukong's Q has a 1.1 total AD ratio in addition to the base. I see no reason that Voliebear's Q shouldn't have a 1.1 or 1.2 total AD ratio. It may sound insignificant, but it's a lot of help, even on heroes that don't stack AD.

He's pretty popular in Europe actually, and is not only a common pick there, but a relatively common ban against players like Tabzz. I don't think I've ever seen Volibear in a serious tournament game, whereas I've seen Wukong in many.

The reason Tankarina worked is because her base damage was high enough where she could still do good damage while being tanky. So the way they approached it was by lowering base damage on her largest nuke and reducing the amount of time she gets the damage reduction from E. So now you can no longer E in, get your damage reduction, and rely on your Q to deal enough damage to kill.

He'd be a lot less frustrating to play against if Arcane Shift didn't trump 90% of the cc you can usually stuff in botlane. Nobody else can blink out like he can. He's just too safe. As long as he has arcane shift and a reasonably powered Q, I don't see how he can ever be bad without completely gutting his bad stats.

Slowed? Arcane shift.
Blitz/Thresh? Arcane Shift.
Leona? Shift and put her under your tower.
Taric? Shift before the stun can get to you.

I'm not saying that it's not ok to have a blink on an AD carry, but Ezreal's is hands-down better than Corki's or Trist's from a defensive standpoint.

The problem with Ezreal being the defensive niche carry is that he also has some of the best power mid game due to his Q.
Damage is effectively worth double on Ezreal when Ashe, Vayne, or anyone else mid-game because raw damage hasn't yet been outshined by crit and attack speed.

Mystic Shot does more damage than an Auto Attack with all the benefit except for crit. A long sword on Ezreal will almost always go farther than a long sword on anyone else because he has a very low cd extra autoattack that also has greater range and can be fire through FoW, and also allows him to collect gold by staying in a teamfight and being useful at 900+ range.

Mystic Shot and Arcane Shift are fine, but having both the safety of Arcane Shift AND the massive power granted by Mystic Shot makes Ezreal far more forgiving than other carries and much easier to get fed with. And not only that, but he's fun and could very well stay popular after being nerfed.

I'm not saying we need to chop up Ezreal's kit or put him in the ground, but I am saying that he'll likely end up like Taric is just now being noticed for. He's very easy to do well with, he's very forgiving, and can (almost) be button mashed by someone who doesn't really know how to play the role. He may sink out of competitive play, but he will always be playable in sub-diamond solo queue.

I really want to thank you for doing these. I really like seeing how the champion's pick/win rates change due to the patches. Do you think you could put these all up on a website so we can see the history of patches better? I mainly say this because it sometimes takes a couple patches for a nerf/buff to affect a champion

That's a load of wash, you can reasonably get a few Rejuvenation Beads early game and build it into either Tiamat or Warmogs. Both items are good for Riven and they provide the same HP/5 that got nerfed off.

The Olaf problem is something new and RIOT is going to have to figure out what to do with it...

Olaf hasn't had a particularly good time of solo queue. Pre-nerf, he was routinely at 44-48% win rate. He often can't carry hard enough to convert a won lane into a won game. BUT in premade 5x5 high elo games, he was an unstoppable monster in the top lane and an invaluable asset.

So RIOT has nerfed him and his winrate has dropped into the doldrums. Now we have to ask ourselves whether the fact that he's been balanced out in 5x5 justifies acquiring Alistar status in solo queue. I don't know what the right answer is here, but it's an interesting puzzle.

I have some new bug that drops 90%+ frames in team fights. This only happens in full screen mode. They sadly didn't fix the dual screen bug and I can't maximize since it goes to the wrong screen so I'm stuck with alt+enter + menu -> video -> borderless every game now. :/

Master Yi really needed the nerf too, going from 49% down to 46%. For that matter, there were an awful lot of nerfs to champions with win rates below 50%.

Highest Daily Winrate chart on lolking. Let's get to some of these first, and leave all the sub 50% champs alone. Most notable on that list is taric, he stepped out and became the best support after a round of nerfs to all the others. He's been god tier for a long time now, he definitely needs a round with the nerf bat.

Remember that a lot of champions are nerfed because of their strength in competitive play (e.g., Olaf and Nunu). While solo queue statistics are one good measure of a champion's strength, it's not the end-all be-all.

Taric has a high win-rate in solo queue (but is almost never picked in competitive play), not because he's overpowered, but because people who are forced into support can play him and do somewhat OK.

he stepped out and became the best support after a round of nerfs to all the others. He's been god tier for a long time now, he definitely needs a round with the nerf bat.

Please, stop demanding nerfs predicated on soloqueue winrate. Taric is already a niche competitive pick and nerfing him for a high soloqueue winrate would almost certainly destroy his competitive viability.

League of Legends is inherently a team game where the vast majority of play is without being an actual team. It has to be balanced around the professional competitive scene, that's the only way it can be balanced.

I am guessing the nerf to Meditate was to see if they can get Yi into a place where his issues can be solved without turning him into an unkillable monster. I expect to see more Yi tweaks in the coming patches.

iirc what they wanted to do was decrease the duration of the heal (which would have been a buff to AD Yi) along with the AP scaling changing but there was some miscommunication between the tea and it ended up just becoming a nerf to the AP ratio.

As others have said, Taric is one of the easiest and most straight-forward supports you can play. In the right hands Lulu is significantly stronger, however she doesn't have as high of a win rate because she is significantly harder to play than Taric. (Skillshot slow, shield vs heal, health boosting ult vs armor boosting passive, single target cc or single target speed up vs single target stun)

Nunu's blood boil made ADCs too strong too fast in the sense that they got a free PD in AS and a lot of extra MS potentially by level 9 if nunu maxes W first on top of the common BT rush. This made them extremely hard to catch and hit extremely hard, making AA pokes really easy to do without punishment (hence cait nunu) and also make hypercarries scale faster/harder (vayne/kog'maw come to mind).

BB got hit in three major eways (iirc) by slightly nerfing the AS it gave at all ranks, dropping the bonus MS per rank (it was 10% per rank starting at 25% MS buff rank 1) to 5% (capping at 45%, a 20% BB MS bonus drop). Now it also can't be up 24/7 due to the cooldown and length disparity (12 second buff 15 sec cooldown, needs 20%CDR to constantly put it up).

All of this on one really strong skill that also depends on someone else using it to full utility. It now isnt nearly as strong or noteable for either jungle or support nunu.

His base MS got a buff so that his own MS wouldnt be hit hard (made low since he has major buffs access from rank 1 if he pleases previously).

I agree he was getting to be stupid as a support but it does kind of screw his jungle** since isn't nearly as fast nor is he a strong clearer unless consume is up. Maybe the bonus damage on 2nd maxing consume will be notable but not having BB for 3 seconds can REALLY hurt a jungle nunu.

Actually they did up his passive (7 aa to 5 for free spell) few patch ago which helped his jungle so he is still good at both support and jungle at the moment. This buff was just too strong for something free and i do think that taric has a way to strong free buff too but it's another topic.

I can't agree with Nasus being too weak still. Maybe it's because he was good at him or because Im still kind of astonished. However, we just got stomped by a TP-Nasus, who did nothing but afk farm until lategame. From there on, no stopping him. The problem was that one cannot just deny him from farming; his lifesteal makes him sustain very good (+ Flask), and you cant just 100-0 him with a jungler's gank. We couldnt even kite him; his slow makes you run backwards. . . Do I miss something or is Nasus just a beast in every phase of the game? I'd really like to know some counterplay

He isn't beast in every phase of the game, his early game is atrocious. I don't know if there is actually a toplaner who would lose a straight 1v1 with Nasus at levels 1-3 apart from maybe the APs. Lifesteal is nice and all, but in a straight fight where you have a measly amount of AD it ain't gonna do f all. All you have to do is bully him away from creeps and FREEZE THE LANE so he can't farm his Q. The worst thing you can do is push Nasus to tower where you can't bully him and he gets to freefarm and sustain with his passive.

If he's already farmed up then 1v1 he will be difficult, but <20 mins a 2v1 gank should kill him pretty quick. He has no escapes and wither needs to be leveled to have any substantial effect over time.

Nooo, he was only the best 1v2 champion in the game, with built in sustain, free Armor pen, ranged waveclear that doubles as a chainable slow, true damage and CC break+immunity ult. Also he could literally built one stat (2 if you felt randy and wanted some sweet sweet CDR - Hint: You always felt randy) and be amazing.

Oh my bad, I thought you read the post. He had a 47% win rate before those nerfs (which means he was absolutely not overpowered) and now he has dropped to 41%, making him extremely close to unplayable.

Your logic: Wukong has a gap-closer, Olaf does not. Wukong has an aoe-knock-up ultimate, Olaf's only give a little stats. Wukong has a spell that increses his next attack damage, that's stronger than an Axe that you have to pick up. Wuckong has stealth too? Wow, just wow. Please nerf this guy.

Yi was already worthless in high elo, where people have more than half a brain, in general. In low elo, however, you pressed Q and W and won your lane every time. I think that's a bit too much power for one single champion in a context where no one knows how to play the game.

cant believe they nerfed olaf so hard. like omfg. its just like irelia. get popular on top lane. fking nerf them to the ground, its ridiculous. wtf am i gonna do with my brolaf now. :((
even the nashors tooth nerf hit my aether wing kayle. FML.

Keep nerfing fun champs to the ground so that all champs are equally not fun to play. We wouldn't want to have fun playing champs that are exceedingly strong in certain ways... Make them all equally bland. kthnx.

All the while leave champs like katarina, darius and swain intact. Trololo riot, trololo.

I must say i can't really understand how deep riot went nerfing Yi, his damage might be from the outter space but, he litteraly has 1 spell to deal damage, like, only 1 spell, after it he's useless, now he just gets focused by an olaf and he's dead while meditating, and in teamfights it's impossible, you get shredded to 0 instantly even with the Stats (100armor+100mr) that meditate gives you.